Religious pandering back home

Oh bugger. One might hope that one of the most non-religious countries in the world would reject this nonsense, but apparently not:

True, it is embarrassing to be the only western democracy that has theocracy built into its legislature. The 26 bishops in the Lords interfere regularly: they are a threat on abortion, and their campaign sank the Joffe bill, giving the terminally ill the right to die in dignity. Of course they should not be there, when only 16% of people will grace the pews on Christmas Day, and Christian Research forecasts church attendance falling by 90%. But a dying faith clings hard to its inexplicable influence on public life.

Labour has encouraged the power of the religions to a remarkable degree, consulting them on endless committees. To be an atheist is now unacceptable in a political leader: when Nick Clegg confessed his non-belief, he had to recant and re-define himself as an “agnostic”. The BBC is increasing religious broadcasting; Radio 4 already does 200 hours. Is this by popular demand? No. An Ofcom survey put religion last in the public’s interests.

(From Polly Toynbee in Comment is free; emphasis mine.)

Historical oddities

I’ve been digging into my American family roots, and came up with a couple of amusing nuggets. My father was American, and his mother was named Kate Denig. This seemed like a fairly easy name to trace, so we worked back through the US Census records at Ancestry.com. There was one significant element of confusion, of which more anon, but eventually I reached my great great great great grandfather, Ludwig Denig, b. 1755. There’s a fair amount of documentary material available: he was a shoemaker, and later an apothecary, in Pennsylvania. He was also a leading light in his local church, and an amateur artist, and I was delighted to discover that a facsimile of a book of his was available: The Picture Bible of Ludwig Denig: A Pennsylvania German Emblem Book. I ordered a copy through Amazon, and it just arrived (from Powells in Portland). It’s in perfect, and beautiful condition.

The Picture Bible of Ludwig Denig: A Pennsylvania German Emblem Book
The Picture Bible of Ludwig Denig: A Pennsylvania German Emblem Book

And the bit of confusion? As we searched the census records for Ohio and Wisconsin, we kept coming across references to members of the “McDenig” family. This seemed odd: I’d never seen a hybrid German-Scottish name before. Eventually light dawned. One of Ludwig’s sons was George Denig, a physician. He married an Eliza McClintock, and their children all took the names of both parents. The next family member in my lineage was his son, Robert McClintock Denig, born in 1813, and a physician like his father. When the census taker recorded his family information, he wrote Robert’s name as “Robert Mc. Denig”. And 150 years later, whoever computerized the census records dutifully transcribed the family name as “McDenig”.
Thus history is made and remade….

A year with the Kindle

Last November, I became one of the first people to acquire an Amazon Kindle ebook reader. A year later, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on a year of living with the device. I’m doing this purely on my own behalf; even though I work for Amazon, I don’t need to pump up demand for the Kindle. Oprah has done this very nicely; indeed, she was so effective that the Kindle is sold out until next year.
So what’s it been like? I’ve used it more than I expected, but less than I wanted to, and the experience has been mostly great, with a few niggling defects. I haven’t used it as consistently as I expected, in part because of my involvement in the Vine program. (If only Vine would deliver content on the Kindle – hint!) And I’ve still bought plenty of paper books, because although Amazon has managed to get over 200,000 titles on the Kindle, there are still plenty of publishers who aren’t on board.
What do I have on my Kindle? Let’s take a look. In the order that I purchased them, I have:
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
Arsenals of Folly by Richard Rhodes.
Takeover by Charlie Savage.
The Complete Poems of John Milton by John Milton.
Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method by Penelope Maddy.
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion by Scott Atran.
The Jefferson Bible by Thomas Jefferson.
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi.
The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson.
Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson.
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy by Douglas A. Anderson.
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby.
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (six volumes) by Edward Gibbon.
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
Chess Strategy by Edward Lasker.
The Necessity of Atheism by David Marshall Brooks.
Red Moon by David S. Michaels & Daniel Brenton.
Spirit House by Christopher G. Moore.
The Dark Side by Jane Mayer.
Illegal Action by Stella Rimington.
Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi.
Sexus by Henry Miller.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson.
The Iron Heel by Jack London.
The World Is Curved by David Smick.
What On Earth Have I Done? by Robert Fulghum.
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.
Nation by Terry Pratchett.
Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham.
At one point I subscribed to the The New York Times, but I found the content quite inconsistent. I now have two subscriptions on my Kindle:
The Independent, which I use to keep up with British news and politics
This blog(!), which I set up to check out the blog publication system.
The Kindle book of the year was clearly Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. Like Alan Jacobs, I found that the Kindle was the perfect way to become absorbed in the story without being distracted by Stephenson’s neologisms and asides. The most expensive item was Penelope Maddy’s philosophy text, which was $63.50. (It’s since come down to $40.) The cheapest? Well, there’s a “long tail” in the Kindle catalog: it’s amusing to search for books sorted by “Price: Low to high”. (Caveat emptor: some deals are too good to be true.)
Things I haven’t tried yet: having the MP3 player supply me with music while I’m reading, and using the Kindle as an Audible.com audiobook player.
Weaknesses? Just a few. Occasionally I will go for several days without reading the Kindle, and when I return to it I find that I need to individually delete back issues of my subscription content. It would be nice to be able to configure an expiration date for ephemeral items. And I’d like to be able to compose book reviews, using text clippings as part of the review. The lack of built-in lighting was occasionally inconvenient (when I’m on a plane where everyone else is asleep, I feel guilty about turning on my overhead light), but I’ve recently solved this with a replacement case for the Kindle from Periscope It has a built in LED lamp, as well as a notepad, and it works pretty well. (It would be nice if the light was dimmable, but never mind.)
The bottom line: I love it. For frequent travellers, it’s an absolute “must have”. During the next year, I’m going to add a few more “dipping into” books; poetry, short stories, etc.

On the toe liberation front….

Inspired by a colleague of mine, I just acquired a pair of Vibram Fivefingers KSO shoes. Vibram Fivefingers KSO A couple of years ago I spent most of the summer in some really thin “river runner” style shoes, and it was the closest thing I’d found to having the freedom of going barefoot while still providing some basic protection. So the prospect of taking the next step and liberating all five ten toes was intriguing.
After years of being cooped up next to each other, my toes aren’t really used to the idea of independent existence, so it took a few minutes to put the shoes on, get each toe into its own pocket, and adjust the straps. Within a couple of minutes I found that the shoes felt very comfortable, and I wore them for a couple of hours around the apartment, with no obvious ill-effects. Obviously today isn’t the day to try them out and about(!), but come the spring…

Seattle comes to a halt

We’re in the middle of what is being described as the most severe cold snap for Seattle in twenty years. Yesterday it was supposed to snow, but downtown escaped because of a “rain shadow” effect. Last night and this morning, however…

The Uwajimaya courtyard in the snow
The Uwajimaya courtyard in the snow
Snow. Lots of it. Soft, fluffy white stuff. And Seattle doesn’t really cope with snow very well. A few trucks and buses acquire snow chains, but nothing really gets ploughed. So most Amazonians are sitting at home, staying warm, logging in via the VPN, and holding meetings via IM or phone. AT&T Wireless got maxed out early on, so I couldn’t call in to Colin’s staff using my iPhone. Instead I scrambled to install Skype on my new Mac Mini and used that instead.
And then after the meeting I threw on my boots and went outside. Because you’re never too old to play in the snow….

Let's hope the corporate travel department doesn't notice this

There’s a new hotel just outside Zurich called the Null Stern. Yes, that’s right, the “Zero Star”. And it’s really spiffy:

For about GBP 6 per night, you’ll get a bed in a former nuclear bunker. The walls are concrete, there are no windows, and there are no decorations. There’s not even any heat. You apparently need to fill up hot water bottles to keep you warm. People have to take turns taking showers and you can only hope they don’t run out of hot water.

(Via BNET.)

Quote for the day

Observed from without, human beings obviously have a natural lifespan and cannot live much longer than a hundred years. A man’s sense of his own experience, on the other hand, does not embody this idea of a natural limit. His existence defines for him an essentially open-ended possible future […] Viewed in this way, death, no matter how inevitable, is an abrupt cancellation of indefinitely extensive possible goods. Normality seems to have nothing to do with it

From Thomas Nagel’s essay “Death”, quoted by Matt Sigl in response to Colin McGinn’s musings about “Why is death bad?”

About to upgrade to WordPress 2.7

As with all major upgrades, a short outage is possible…..
(A few minutes later.)
Well, that was painless. If you notice any issues, please comment here….
UPDATE: Let me just try a couple of plugins to make sure they’re working. I don’t actually use that many plugins ((and those that I do are relatively simple)) so this should be easy.